South Lombok is Blessed with the Islands Best Beaches

Traveljunkieindonesia.com – I love Lombok! I brought my friends and the tandem bike to south Lombok from Senggigi – with its amazing, sweeping, postcard-perfect views of Rinjani mountain, magical rice fields and exotic villages. Tropical Loveland by ABBA became our theme songs for this trip.

South Lombok is blessed with the island’s best beaches, from dramatic cliff-backed coves to oceanic expanses that catch world-class waves.

Surfers are drawn here by the world-class waves, but the village has a languid charm of its own with some delightful hotels and a succession of dramatic bite-shaped bays nearby.

Quite good roads traverse the coast to the east, passing a series of beautiful bays punctuated by headlands. There’s public transport, but it’s much easier by motorcycle.

Segar beach is about 2km east around the first headland, within walking distance of the town. The enormous rock of Batu Kotak, 2km further on, divides two glorious white-sand beaches.

Tanjung Aan Beach (Image courtesy of Nungki Nugroho)

Continuing east, Tanjung Aan is a very fine beach with chalkwhite powdery sand. Due to a spate of problems with stealing, there’s a security guard keeping an eye on the place – even so, it’s best not to bring valuables to the beach.

The road continues another 2km to the fishing village and surfer’s fave Gerupak, where there’s a market on Tuesday and a restaurant on the beach. Alternatively, turn northeast just before Tanjung Aan and go to Awang, a busy fishing village with a sideline in seaweed harvesting. You could take a boat from Awang across to Ekas or to some of the other not-so-secret surf spots in this bay.

Awang Beach (Image courtesy of Nungki Nugroho)

West of Kuta are a succession of outstanding beaches that all have superb surf when conditions are right. The road, which is potholed and very steep in places, doesn’t follow the coast closely, so you’ll need to detour slightly to find the beaches.

Mawan is the most impressive, a bite-shaped bay backed by steep green hills with a fine sandy beach below. Tampa is similar but a little wilder – you will need to drive through rice fields along a grassy road and past a tiny village to get there. Mawi, 16km from Kuta, is an absolutely stunning beach and surfing stronghold with a legendary barrel wave, but there can be a very strong riptide, so be extra careful. Sadly, thefts have been reported here.

Selong Blanak is another wonderfully expansive stretch of sand. From Pengantap, the road climbs across a headland to descend to another superb bay; follow this around for about 1km, then look out for the turn-off west to Blongas, a sheltered bay with relatively calm water and fine swimming. The road to reach it is very steep, rough and winding, but it has breathtaking scenery.